NEW YORK (AP) — During a record 12 years on “Saturday Night Live”, Darrell Hammond has provided pitch-perfect impressions of billionaire real estate tycoon Donald Trump, former US Vice President Al Gore, and actor-turned-governor Arnold Schwarzenegger. On this night, with a Yankees baseball cap atop his head, the comedy veteran is working in a less familiar voice: his own.Hammond is onstage at the Comedy Cellar in Manhattan, where he has performed regularly during his long run on SNL. Hammond follows former SNL “Weekend Update” host Colin Quinn, who minutes after finishing his own set sounds like more of a fan than a colleague.

“Please do Jesse and Sharpton!” Quinn calls out, leaning forward like an impatient eight-year-old.

Hammond obliges, swapping his slight Southern drawl for some Jesse Jackson before distorting his voice into a blustery sound-bite machine to do another civil rights leader, the Rev. Al Sharpton. “I did not call Giuliani a Bozo,” he says in Sharpton’s familiar cadence, denying that he intended to compare the former New York mayor to a popular television clown. “I said Bozo could have done just as good a job as Giuliani!”

Then he does Trump, generating laughs by ending every thought from the self-promoting real estate mogul with a pause and two words — “The Apprentice”. Next, President George W. Bush, drawing cascading laughs.

Other voices follow in rapid succession: Ronald Reagan, Homer Simpson, Popeye, Dick Cheney, North Korean leader Kim Jong Il, TV psychologist Dr. Phil. And finally President Bill Clinton, a man Hammond describes as “larger than life” and a voice that Hammond returns to at regular intervals.

It is a good night because Hammond is easily scoring the ten good laughs he wants each minute. To measure what works, he has placed a tape recorder on stage. When he is not doing the voices of others, his own soft tones escape.

A man whose vocal victims generally offer their praise might be above this quest for perfection, but somebody forgot to tell the blue-eyed Hammond he is famous. And his hard-knock past haunts his ego.

“College kids, don’t be taking examples from me,” he warns after noting his low 2.1 grade-point average in college. “I was drunk for 32 years.”

The crowd laughs again, but Hammond is serious. By just about any measure, Hammond has reached comedy’s top tier. But by Hammond’s measure, he remains a struggling comic.

“I want to be good. I don’t think I’m good,” Hammond says. And he means it, at that moment. A bit later he says: “I’ve always been pretty good but not as good as I want to be.”

The hunger is not so much for fame or fortune as it is to perfect an art form that brought him salvation once his dreams of professional baseball died, killed off at the University of Florida by his inability to solve the riddle of a well-thrown slider.

Looking at his other abilities for a new career direction, he dusted off voice skills he had developed before age ten when he played with consonants and vowels so he could mimic the characters in “A Christmas Carol” or Porky Pig saying, “That’s all folks!”

The detour took him from dirt baseball diamonds to a radio job and later to 18 years of developing comedy material. He became one of hundreds of other young comedians across the country, performing thousands of shows, hoping to win enough notice to find steady paycheques.

Now he is welcomed and applauded even by his impression targets. Bush always whispers something funny in his ear, he says. Hammond wants his subjects to enjoy his work and he is careful not to take sides politically.

“I’m not sure how a world leader reacts to the work of a clown,” he says. “When you visit a White House or shake a president’s hand, I’m really impressed with them and happy I’ve come this far.”

Chris Rock, as big a star as exists in stand-up comedy, happens to visit the club on this night to begin work on his new stage act.

Hammond looks at him and quietly says he’s not at Rock’s level. Rock speaks admiringly of Hammond, saying, “I’m always impressed with guys who do something I can’t do.”

Like 12 years on “Saturday Night Live”?

“Twelve years! I think it’s great,” says Rock, noting that Hammond’s career has endured longer than some of those he imitates. “The thing with Darrell is he just adapts, not like somebody doing John Wayne impressions.”

Hammond talks of his past as if he is lucky to be alive, certainly to be on stage or television.

In his down time he helps people battle addictions, just like others helped him overcome cigarettes, alcohol and drugs.

“I’ve never really gotten into it how bad it really was. I think the story is disheartening. It was an ugly story,” he says.

He still wears black, something he started doing after the 1991 death of a close friend left him so devastated that he resumed abusing alcohol and drugs after a six-year hiatus.

“It was the way it occurred, the theatricality of that kind of death and what they do at funerals,” he says. “I drank again. I couldn’t make it.”

A few years later, he was spotted at Carolines comedy club in Manhattan doing a single Clinton line. He was added, at age 39, to the cast of “Saturday Night Live”. He had been rejected twice before.

Once on the show, he was not sure he would last. Then, in the second half of his first season, he was impersonating Ted Koppel and tossed in an ad lib, and suddenly realised he could make it.

“I wasn’t just reciting the lines,” he said. “I actually became the character for one second.”

Despite his success, he remained sad and cloaked his pain in his addictions. He hit bottom at a “really big job for a really big client” in Las Vegas, when he barely knew where he was.

“There was a level of humiliation that was astonishing,” he says. “We’ve all suffered our little humiliations and despair and defeats but it was like nuclear, like atomic.”

As soon as he walked off stage, Hammond was escorted to the airport and entered a detox clinic. “I remember sitting there in detox just convinced that I would be dead by nightfall, but also convinced there was no way out,” he says.

After he completed the treatment and felt lucky to be alive anywhere, he got on a plane, flew to New York and the next day was greeting the nation again on “Saturday Night Live.”

Sober for several years, Hammond has lost weight and adopted a fitness philosophy of slow improvements that he is applying to his comedy.

“I’ve become fascinated by the idea that it’s really achievable to make two or three small improvements in a week and by the end of the year, it’s 150 improvements,” he says.

Hammond still dreams, talking about some day having his own act in Las Vegas or becoming a character actor in Hollywood. But he also says he might someday dedicate himself full time as a volunteer helping others overcome addictions.

“I’m starting to wear colours,” he says. “Maybe I’ve decided to get over it all. I know I’m enjoying it more. All of a sudden I remember the gifts. I perform in the major leagues of what I do. It’s incredible. I don’t have to indict the world anymore.”

Hammond remains at the top of his game